Lessons

Lesson Info

Reviewing Previous Images

goingto talk a little bit about some of the stuff that we did yesterday I will show you some of the images these images are literally if there's a photo shop done on them it's just a tiny tiny bit I want just to show you what came out of the camorra from some of the shots yesterday okay and we're gonna start with uh young lady with you see the light that's these could deconstruct it now you were here so you know how we can deconstruct it right what what is this over here in her I suspect we're looking for speculate yep nice big speculator big square speculator it's soft box right we know that's what it wass but we also have remember yesterday said I call him secondary speculators or highlights reflected highlights that's a reflected highlight over here right that's the big white phil card that we used and right there in the eye right there you can see it so you could deconstruct this if you I want you to get to where you look at a photograph like that you think that wasn't done with an...

umbrella first of all an umbrella wouldn't give us a vertical highlight here that highlight that speculator on her forehead is that soft box an umbrella would be a rounder shape so we can start to deconstruct pretty smile too huh and she's far enough away from the background the white background that it went grey because of uh the inverse square law were farther away from the source with the background they're set it off nicely and with this one do you remember this lighting up in the eye there coming down and dangle on that one that was the forty three inch umbrella little a little circle lair in the eye and of course um her very pale skin we don't see a speculator on the skin but we know it's there it's just a light speculator on light skin but also look how the light wraps up under her her chin here remember yes we were talking about um looking at light as water right light as water coming from a bounced umbrella focuses all in on it one certain area kind of wraps around kind of wrapping around like it does here life from a soft boxes more like a mister and the misting soft the misting water coming out may not come under here as well so this is a bit different highlight our shadow um highlight shadow break shadow transition than a soft box would give in really close you can see the difference was he moved farther back uh farther back than twice the diameter it becomes just a lite and it's really be becomes difficult to see because thie qualities of those light sources aren't uh seen look at the brilliant highlight on her lip of course we moved her away from the wall here so that the wall was going much darker then the highlights in her hair that's the reflected card back here which you can kind of see picking up right back here in her hair yes under her chin there's a light line is that her shirt reflecting up right here yeah that's this gold okay anything anytime anything is shiny down here on the chest upper chest area it has the ability to come right up under the chin that's exactly what that is that's why you have to be careful with certain things especially uh the negative thanks like black turtlenecks can you know it could be very difficult to fight eh a dark shadow under the chin if someone's wearing a black turtleneck can't get the white up under it close enough so you have to you have to do the best you can with things like that and this is this is this someone I still knocks me out I mean this is the sun remember we put one head up made it the sun that's the sun and that's the same shot with a five and one diffuser right over the top of her head and a white card below that's all we used white card in the center part of the five and one uh lighting packs I'm not a big gearhead folks I think that's pretty obvious but I've got to tell you those five and ones we have the gold in the white and the diffuser inside when you buy them you buy to that match always by two that match yes I don't know which brand I have a question from caz mob do you ever use a source specifically for its shape and the shape of its of the secular absolutely absolutely we're going teo if not today then tomorrow depending on which would shoot we do we're actually on a show why I choose that but let's talk about that for a moment let's uh uh it was funny because we were talking with john cornish hello john likes to use box lights for his people photography and I prefer umbrellas I prefer round lights where we both agree though is when I use the box I'll I'll put a piece of black kaffirs tape down the middle and sideways so I'll take the box and make it into window light looks like window panes like that look when I use a square highlight in the eyes is generally when I doing that I'm thinking commercial I'm thinking my talent that I'm photographing is holding something because it's really difficult for me to imagine very many products that look good lit with an umbrella I just umbrella lighting isn't for product it's round scott little ribs it's got shapes to it and if you're holding a wine glass you're gonna have a reflection of umbrella in it not and we don't want to know what we want a white speculum highlight so my brain tends to run towards commercial work I go with that highlight uh portrait work I like the roundness of uh umbrella why maybe because the sun is round and I started photography with with lights I shot fashion and beauty for fifteen years and the only time I took my strobes out of the studio I think I probably couldn't count on one hand maybe five or six times a year when I was outside on location we shot natural light bounce cards gold cards silver cards all kinds of cards and things to balance the light and move the light around but I never took strobes outside wasn't my style and still I there's a lot of times when I go out now take a trunk full of gear and still just shoot the light that I see it because I love it it's an it's emotional attachment to me so to speak so yeah I do think of shapes in the eyes I'm also not I don't care much about what they look like we're going to do a shot today with umbrellas all way around them the camera which leaves four catch lights in the eyes it's an awesome lighting thing but it's a some people though there's force catch lights in the eyes that's true I've been working in this business for many decades many decades I've never had an art director say to may well there's too many catch lights in her eyes ever I've had people on forums say it I'm gonna go with the client yes why to the same reflectors buy two of everything not just reflectors two of everything you buy forty three inch umbrellas by two uh sixty inch umbrellas by two because at some point you're gonna go with a double lighting scheme whether it's over and under clamshell or side by side or you want a light somebody evenly from two sides because it fits the the the idea that you have the the layout that you have and a sixty and a forty three aren't gonna match then and if you're going to do some kind of bounced sliding I'm goingto do beach lighting here day after to our tomorrow beach when I called beach lighting my name for beach lighting um but beach lighting is basically using reflectors totally for the feel light up front or for the main light up front being lit from behind until you want him to match so if there's a case where you need to use to reflectors in the I u d I don't want to have a twenty four to forty three so always buy two that match of everything well no you don't buy to hassle bladders that match if you do send one to me I could live with just one but that's pretty dramatic isn't it now why did the background get brighter remember diffuser kills stop and a half so when we drove the light through the diffuser we had to open up a stop and a half because the sun or the stroke coming through diffuser was killed a little bit by that's so once we did that we opened her up right however back is still over exposed so and of course same thing that's one light one bare light uh up above and coming through a diffuser and a white card bolo out could you could you shoot all day doing this I could I like that look like it's really pretty how much carrot and reuse not much how could you do this differently you could probably use you could stretch a shower curtain above that the top of a you know a couple of pieces of what's it called a plastic piping pvc pvc pipe make a pb site pbs pvc pipe put it up there go outside let the sun come through the top of a hill in the bottom and shoot this so yes we are surrounded in here by a lot of great gear and I have a lot of great gear but I don't let the gear dictate what I do I let photograph dictate what I do um someone asked me yesterday do I like going out by myself or with assistance I like going out by myself and if I could do something like this and just me and a talent I'll do that and uh and but this I know like I said I did no photo shop this's nothing's fixed so I can go it I could go in and give me some get some highlights in here and maybe a little contouring in here etcetera but look at the difference in skin tones and anomalies on the skin show up over here not even seen here when I didn't take him out that's that girl is right there thirty seconds away the last shots that we did I shoot in black and white a lot I just wouldn't let you see what I see when I'm shooting in black and white question did but back yeah great so the question was from s petey tierney six from the uk can you comment on the different skin tones on the mayor photos on this one and this one yeah he's too well I think maybe a comparison different okay on the skin tones that is the question okay what happens on the skin tone of studying right scotty what happens the skin tone cloudiness she's being struck by a very small light which is still bigger by the way than the sun okay this is still a better shot than the sun would have given us because that stroll we was a bear pro photo head's still a seven and chad that was only maybe six feet above her it's still a little bit bigger there's something else about the pro photo lighting here and it's not a sales pitch for them at all they have that diffuser that goes over the the stroke to that changes the way the light works in that reflektor it's not as harsh coming a director's pro photo light is not as harsh as a direct other brand light where you just have a bear stroke to like my norman's wow that's just bang on hard light that diffuser diffuses it into the into the thing it's not an ad for pro photo but it is part of why a lot of tigers like him so this is actually better so what we're having here this's what's his name from you joke eyes that we have dark skin tone with a hot speculum the rest of the skin tone is not reading because she's dark skin skin is a shiny semi shiny efficient surface and my efficient so we have that and then nothing because all the rest of her face here is reflecting nothing great ground right carpet et cetera right when we brought the answer's very small light source we bring the light source in very close that's the diffuser which is literally just above her head here the light source becomes huge so all of her skin tone then reflects the light source all of the true values of her skin is seeing that's because the skin sees all this white up here and then we put a white card out in front of her so she has no um she's no other opportunity but to reflect the items that we've given for her to reflect and the same with melissa the sun comes in way see every line how hard the shadow line is here it's very distinct and when we bring the silver the diffuser over the top you create a much bigger light source and so all of her face has something bright to reflect everything reflects everything we think subject out we have to provide something for this part of her face to reflect that's the very very close lighting source which is a soft light and then the bounce card from below and look how it changes this and of course we had to open up a stop and a half our background still remains stopping high half brighter in this shot of claudine where you can see when I shoot in black and white one of the reasons I do it so I can see these contrasts in here this was a pro photo up here coming this way and then used our is that the soft box of the shower curtain that we used right remember shower curtain up so easy easy fun little shot easy to do trying to create dimension in the photograph by having uh dark light dark light and of course this last shot we did which is where we just basically had the diffuser up really close to her and we're thinking subject out we wanted the light to fall off if you can see how much brighter is here than it is here that's because the lights so close it's falling off but we're driving it through the diffuser so it's kind of soft up here and then it just falls off back here we got this great little shadow that comes in there so we're also flagging it off yes yes um I don't think the flag the flag is darkening it in here we didn't get the one with the flag come over I didn't do that one that's this the one with flags it right in close but we just try to create a little pool of light and we do that by thinking about how our lights going to react with our background donna tom s don is wondering how close does a subject have to be to the diffuser to make it a light source instead of a shadow as um tom put that diffuser as close as you can get it move it out only to the point where that's and that's how all my lights as close as I can get him is where I'm gonna put him eighty percent of time as close as I can go so start this close as you can get and then and if it's if you have to back up your camera and it's on your camera a little bit pull it out until it's just out of camera and both of these shots that one and that one that diffuser is just out of camera it is that close absolutely done yesterday you mentioned something about uh not having problems which shadows if you go back to that shot of elissa in black and white do you ever find a spot where you say no that channel just not gonna work or oh absolutely sure there's there's times when she shadows to me look wrong then there's times when shadows look right for me I can't have her face looking up into light without shadow it would make no emotional sense to may so and then driving the shadow over here and getting the little kind of a nice edge to it and pulling this red this a red jacket pulling this red against that's really pretty as well so I want to show you in black and white so I have a great scent of of of grey scales there to work with and I like the shadow in this case because it's set it makes the image work right if we didn't have the shadow it's a different shot you know we wouldn't have any emotion to it shadows our emotion you know every picture is a shadow and it has some source of light right who said that johnny mitchell I quote joni mitchell a lot joining um so yeah so it's it's the emotional part of what we do and you can see and my photographs I'm not trying to make photographs that look like illustrations um I love to look at uh people who do uh there's a there's a sometimes a main that runs through that you have tto want to shoot like the people whose photographs you like and I don't believe that's true um I absolutely love joel peter witkin sze photography scares the heck out of me just just you know you just don't want to be the same room on a late stormy night with him you know I'm right and john john shaking his head right I adore his photography I have no desire to shoot photographs like him none whatsoever um tim tatter in san diego brilliant photographer unbelievable photographer I don't want to make photographs like his I just love looking at his photographs you know so expand your horizons and look at people who you wouldn't want to shoot like but yet you still can enjoy and really really really like jake single I want to shoot like him to be twenty four years old and just bright eyed and bushy told tale if you're not familiar with jake singles work get familiar with it I think he's absolutely incredible